


So Good They Named It Twice

by delgaserasca



Category: CSI: Miami, NCIS, Numb3rs
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-31
Updated: 2007-12-31
Packaged: 2018-07-16 16:28:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7275529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delgaserasca/pseuds/delgaserasca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three unrelated vignettes of New York City. (Amita; Megan; Ziva)</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Good They Named It Twice

if I can make it there  
I'll make it anywhere  
it's up to you, new york, new york  
**frank sinatra, _new york, new york_**  


 

 

_one: not for lack of trying._ (Amita) 

Five o' clock in the morning, the phone's shrill ring cuts through her sleep. She feels heavy, she feels weightless; she feels nauseous. She reaches out for the handset, knocks it to the floor. Well, shit. At least it's stopped ringing. Blood is hammering through her head. Now would be the perfect time for a glass of water to magically appear in front of her face. Knowing her luck, she'd drop that, too.

When she finally gets up and checks the number, she's glad she didn't make more effort.

 

 

He calls again, twice at the university, three times on her cell, and twice at home. The tap in the kitchen won't stop dripping; it's time to call a plumber, she thinks. She deletes all the messages on her answering machine.

 

 

After that she almost forgets him. When he called she used to drink. He doesn't call now, but she drinks anyway. Why break a good habit?

She makes it to class on time, grades papers, sets quizzes. She's about to be published again, too, which is a bonus. She has coffee on the walk to class, and lunch with Morgan, a Physicist with Larry's grace, but not his scope. She drinks alone. It's late fall, the city is all light and no day; sometimes she stands on the curb, balancing precariously, and feels it humming all around her. Someone's busking on the other side of the street, and behind her to the right there's a hot dog stand. This is real, she reminds herself, I'm here, I'm free. It's _real_.

Three weeks go by and she grabs her paper off the mat when she goes down. She's flicking through her mail at Starbucks - bill, junk, junk, another bill. There's a wedding invitation from an old acquaintance, a belated (early?) birthday card from a cousin. She's back on the street by the time she sees it. Traffic buzzes around her; she nearly spills her coffee.

He's written her a letter. Slow, deliberate, the kind of thing that takes time and thought. She can feel his hands across the paper, the way they slid over her hips; she can see the ink bleeding into his finger tips, smudging under the weight of the pen. She'd be touched if she wasn't late.

 

 

Morgan wants to take her to New Jersey for Christmas; she doesn't tell her parents until it's too late to change her plans. She wakes early, dresses for the cold. She's not sure she trusts Morgan behind the wheel of a car, she knows she doesn't trust the roads. It's bitter out today; frost on her face makes her skin tight when she walks indoors. She's always liked that feeling.

New York City, sun shining white in the winter sky. Car's parked on the corner, snow is breaking up the street in great dirty drifts of slush. She writes the postcard on the hood of the car, hands red in the biting air; Morgan's singing Christmas carols, changing the words at whim. She signs it with a kiss - she's feeling that kind of reckless today - then mails it.

She doesn't think of him again.

 

 

_two: two steps forward, one step forward._ (Megan) 

She rings in the New Year with Cassie and Kichirou is drunk, drunker than she's seen him before. He's normally so quiet; she doesn't know what to make of this sudden animation. His bones flash through a his fingers, and she's reminded of corpses burnt to a crisp. She kisses him lightly under the mistletoe, laughs when he blushes. Cassie raises a glass from across the room, and she echoes the gesture. She's had too much to drink, she thinks.

When the countdown begins, Cassie is nowhere to be seen, and Kichirou, Kichirou, warm and wan, is laughing by her side.

 

 

It's the same work, here like in Miami, and it's the same level she'd be at if she'd stayed in Florida, not quite at the top, though close enough. But the differences are stark enough for it not to matter, and anyway, if she tells the truth, it wasn't the job she'd been running from.

 

 

She'll never get used to this cold, she thinks, feeling it slip a sly hand down her back. She arches, stretches, knocks the lamp. Kichirou still isn't talking to her, too shy, too ashamed. She brings him coffee and a bagel, so he's looking at her at least, but no words, not yet. Cassie thinks it's hilarious, wants to prise the man open, but she knows better, how she knows, gentle, gentle is the way.

Patience wasn't always her forte but this city moves differently to Miami. Maybe it was the sun, maybe it was him, but something made her tick over in the south, and it didn't follow her north the way she feared it would. There are faces here, nameless, and bodies, bruiseless. Not everything is history, not if you don't want it to be.

 

 

Early Spring catches her by surprise. Cassie's browsing through the florist for something to take to her grandmother; she's talking on the phone, half-English, half-Spanish. It's like being at home, she thinks, before it's too late, and she can't take the thought back.

Her hand brushes past pink orchids; outside a dog is barking at the oncoming traffic. The sun cuts through suddenly, washes the store in a flash of yellow light, and for a moment she's in a memory, Sean wading through the irrigated fields, sun too high in the burnt-blue sky, and flowers, flowers everywhere.

She shudders. The light passes. The city thunders around her.

 

 

On Tim's birthday she almost makes the drive to Syracuse, but the idea is too cruel, so she doesn't.

 

 

Kichirou brings her muffins and the mail. She's flipping through the labs from yesterday when he sidles in; the crossword is half-finished on the counter, and he pens in a couple of answers. Cassie has court; it's raining outside, a familiar sound.

The card from Horatio is the third envelope she comes to. She doesn't open it; she doesn't want to know.

 

 

_three: just try to take it home._ (Ziva) 

Batel used to write poetry in the palm of her hand, and she thinks of that now when she sees graffiti on the city walls. Tony is talking about a girl, a film, something she cannot identify, but it is no matter. The city has grown up from the ground. She likes it, she decides, the city and the scrawlings. They feel familiar.

 

 

Gibbs' voice gets caught in the whipping wind, and Ziva has to strain to hear. His fingers are dry and white against the muted brown of his shop-bought coffee, and he swallows it quickly which is when she realises this is the lesser of two evils - bad coffee, or no coffee at all. Across the road the city's uniformed police are gathered, guarding the scene from passing onlookers. There are fewer people than she anticipated. McGee tells her it's New York. "They see this stuff every day around here."

The sailor is face-down on the sidewalk, blood half-dry now, struck on the concrete like a large misplaced asterisk. She takes photos by rote, is careful and diligent. She wonders of the sun and where it goes on days like this. The city towers in above.

 

 

The details lead them out to suburbia. The world is recognisable, similar to Washington. She cannot stop looking around, she cannot stop taking it in. She finds she misses the weight of the city pressing in on her and finds it strange - she had not taken to London, but this city, this feels like something else.

Gibbs snaps at her, but not unkindly, and when they drive back to Manhattan, neither of them speaks.

 

 

They arrest a marine in the middle of the street, and when she no longer has to bend over for breath, she hears drums and laughter, feet skipping over the paving. People are clapping; some are singing. There's a large stereo - "boom box," Tony corrects - and a ring of bodies. Ziva pushes her way through to see young men dancing, dropping to the floor and rising up in waves, their bodies strong and flexible. They look like they are training, but it's the music that makes it real, the music that makes it beautiful.

Ziva cannot help herself; she claps too, she stamps her feet. In her mind's eye she can hear Batel reciting verse as fast as she can before she forgets, before she loses her breath, and Ziva is there too, in her own memory, laughing and running through the desert dust. She catches Gibbs' eye across the distance, through the crowd, and she smiles. The city dances around her.

 

 

**end.**  



End file.
